Anthony Fauci’s newly released diary entries, made public by Sen. Rand Paul, reveal that Fauci privately viewed efforts to fast-track COVID-19 treatments and vaccines before the 2020 election as politically motivated — and show he recorded personally intervening to support FDA officials resisting pressure for emergency authorizations.
The entries were first highlighted by Justin Hart of the Rational Ground Substack.
The entries, spanning five months in 2020, detail Fauci’s concerns about what he repeatedly described as an effort to deliver President Donald Trump an “October surprise” ahead of Election Day. They also identify the administration officials he believed were applying pressure and document a call in which Fauci wrote that he and other top federal health officials assured the FDA’s top vaccine regulator they would support him if he refused to approve a vaccine prematurely.
The diary centers on several key figures. Peter Marks led the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, the office responsible for reviewing vaccine applications. Then-FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn oversaw Marks. Fauci also references then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, NIH Director Francis Collins, Fauci deputy Cliff Lane and Larry Horowitz, whom he identifies as someone working closely with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
One of the earliest entries, dated June 20, 2020, focuses not on White House political aides but on then-White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx.
Fauci wrote that he had become increasingly frustrated with Birx, accusing her of wanting to bypass traditional clinical trials in favor of emergency authorizations.
“Deb has ststed [sic] that we should noit [sic] do clinical trials since ‘I want to see every infected person in a nursing home get plasma early on and steroids later. Forget the trial, we need to do this on EUAs. She says the same thing about vaccine trials. Clearly, she is trying to provide Trump with his October surprise. I may need to blow the whistle on her.”
The diary entry suggests Fauci believed months before the election that accelerating vaccine approvals was being driven by politics rather than science, and that he was already considering publicly opposing the effort.
By late July, Fauci recorded similar concerns about Meadows.
In a July 26 entry, Fauci wrote that after watching Meadows on television, he believed the chief of staff was “trying to get an ‘October Surprise’” and warned of an effort to push an early vaccine approval.
The following day, after briefing Trump in the Oval Office on vaccines and therapeutics, Fauci wrote that the president acknowledged a vaccine might not be ready before Election Day, though “he was not happy about it.”
Hellbound and Down 